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The Journal of Neuroscience, August 1, 2007, 27(31):8405-8413; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1257-07.2007

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Development/Plasticity/Repair
Bilateral Cortical Interaction: Modulation of Delay-Tuned Neurons in the Contralateral Auditory Cortex

Jie Tang,¹ Zhongju Xiao,² and Nobuo Suga¹

¹Department of Biology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63130, and ²Department of Physiology, Nanfang Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China

Correspondence should be addressed to Nobuo Suga, Department of Biology, Washington University, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130. Email: suga{at}biology.wustl.edu

Transcallosal excitation and inhibition have been theorized based on the effect of callosotomy on intractable epilepsy and dichotic listening research, respectively. We studied bilateral interaction of cortical auditory neurons and found that this interaction consisted of focused facilitation and widespread lateral inhibition. The frequency modulated (FM)–FM area of the auditory cortex of the mustached bat is composed of delay-tuned neurons tuned to the combination of the emitted biosonar pulse and its echo with a specific echo delay [best delay (BD)] and consists of three subdivisions in terms of the combination sensitivity of neurons. We found that focal electric stimulation of one of these three subdivisions evoked BD shifts of delay-tuned neurons in all three subdivisions of the contralateral FM–FM area, presumably via the corpus callosum. The effect of electric stimulation of the delay-tuned neurons on the contralateral delay-tuned neurons was different depending on whether the BD of a recorded neuron was matched or unmatched in BD with that of the stimulated neurons. BD-matched neurons did not change their BDs and increased the responses at their BDs, whereas BD-unmatched neurons shifted their BDs away from the BD of the stimulated neurons and reduced their responses. The ipsilateral and contralateral BD shifts evoked by the electric stimulation were identical to each other. The contralateral modulation, in addition to the ipsilateral modulation, increases the contrast in the neural representation of the echo delay to which the stimulated neurons are tuned.

Key words: bat; corpus callosum; echolocation; hearing; plasticity; combination sensitivity

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Received March 20, 2007; revised May 13, 2007; accepted June 11, 2007.

Correspondence should be addressed to Nobuo Suga, Department of Biology, Washington University, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130. Email: suga{at}biology.wustl.edu

This article has been cited by other articles:

				S. Sadagopan and X. Wang Nonlinear Spectrotemporal Interactions Underlying Selectivity for Complex Sounds in Auditory Cortex J. Neurosci., September 9, 2009; 29(36): 11192 - 11202. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				J. Tang and N. Suga Corticocortical Interactions between and within Three Cortical Auditory Areas Specialized for Time-Domain Signal Processing J. Neurosci., June 3, 2009; 29(22): 7230 - 7237. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				J. Tang and N. Suga Modulation of auditory processing by cortico-cortical feed-forward and feedback projections PNAS, May 27, 2008; 105(21): 7600 - 7605. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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